PLENTY OF TIPS OFFERED, BUT ZOO’S STORK IS STILL MISSING

SAN PASQUAL VALLEY 
Despite receiving more than 100 tips by midday Thursday about the possible whereabouts of a missing stork, San Diego Zoo officials said they’ve yet to locate the runaway exotic bird.

The 1-year-old female painted stork was in training Monday afternoon for the Frequent Flyers bird show at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, when it got caught up in a vertical current of air and blew — then flew — out of the park in the San Pasqual Valley. Park bird staff and local birding groups searched for the 3-foot-tall black and white bird for two days. Then on Wednesday, they put out a call for the public’s help.

Zoo spokeswoman Christina Simmons said that as soon as news of the missing stork broke Wednesday, the zoo’s email basket and phone lines were flooded with tips about bird sightings from all over the county. One email even came in from Phoenix, though it was for an unusual bird spotted in the desert city several weeks ago.

“So far, our stork has not been found,” Simmons said Thursday afternoon. “We’ve had a lot of calls from people who said they saw a bird going this way or that way two days ago, and it could easily have been our stork, but there’s no way for us to know.” From photo evidence, most of the birds that local residents have spotted have been two native species — snowy egrets (which are white with a black bill) and great blue herons (which are grayish and have a shorter beak).

The missing painted stork, which is native to South Asia, has white body feathers, black wing and tail feathers, pinkish feathers on its tail and legs, and a long yellow pointed bill.

Among the bird-spotters who called and emailed the U-T San Diego offices on Thursday was James Cutler, a North County resident who saw what looked like a stork among the egrets at Buccaneer Bay in Oceanside. Martin Munguia of El Cajon sent in photographs of a snowy egret in his front yard Wednesday. Ben Rinner called to say he saw what looked like a stork resting on a hillside along Interstate 15 near the Rancho Bernardo Road exit Wednesday. Bruce Virgilio saw a large grayish bird flying near Railroad and Cottonwood avenues in Santee Wednesday evening. On Thursday morning, Shirley Bayles saw an unusual bird in the Los Penasquitos Lagoon at Carmel Valley Road near Via Grimaldi. And another caller on Pepper Drive in Santee saw a big bird land in his back yard, hop on the roof and then fly away.

Simmons said that in the 100-year history of the zoo, there have been some extreme cases where birds have escaped from the zoo and eventually come back after a long time. But because this bird was raised in captivity, its likelihood of surviving in the wild for very long is questionable.

For now, zoo officials remain hopeful that they’ll find the stork. They ask that anyone who spots what could be the stork to not approach it, but instead take a digital photograph, note the location with their contact information and send it to
publicrelations@sandiegozoo.org.